


afterimages

by kosy



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Friendship, Gen, Light Angst, Resurrection, because theyre both like . back now which is SO weird to me, obligatory "mike and jaylen get to talk before he retreats into the shadows", season six
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26998357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/kosy
Summary: “Hi,” he says. “How’s it going?” Jaylen doesn’t dignify that with an answer, just raises an eyebrow, and he laugh-sighs. “Yeah. I get it.” He lowers himself down to sit next to her, the dirt of the mound gritty between his fingers. Her uniform is charred. He realizes, with some discomfort, that she is literally still smoking.
Relationships: Jaylen Hotdogfingers & Mike Townsend
Comments: 9
Kudos: 42





	afterimages

**Author's Note:**

> jaylen and mike.... friends. once again i am crying to "mike townsend (knows what he's gotta do)". et cetera. just a little fic i wrote between the last blaseball fic and the longer one i'm working on at the moment! some content notes: more severe swearing than is allowed in the official discord, and general discussion of death and the horror tragedy that is blaseball if you treat the absurdity seriously. hope you all enjoy!

It’s dark in here. Mike doesn’t know why that surprises him, but it does.

Even the stadium lights far overhead are dim, their glow filtering through the air so thinly that the whole field looks like a dreamscape. When he waves his own hand in front of his face, his fingers are followed by a blur, like the world is being taped on some shitty camcorder playing in slow mo. Instant replay, again and again and again. 

“Hello?” he calls into the dark, and it comes out strained and raspy. He clears his throat and tries again. “Hello? Is anyone there?” There’s a delay, he realizes. Between the movement of his mouth and his words. His stomach still churns. He’d thought the anxiety would stop now that he was. Well. Anyway he had been wrong. 

“Mike?” someone says from the middle of the field, and, painfully slowly, he follows the voice. 

Sitting on the pitchers mound, legs folded up to her chest and elbows resting on her knees, is Jaylen Hotdogfingers. She looks like hell and smells like burnt-down ashes, which Mike figures makes sense. Death by godly fire and all that. 

“Hi,” he says. “How’s it going?” Jaylen doesn’t dignify that with an answer, just raises an eyebrow, and he laugh-sighs. “Yeah. I get it.” He lowers himself down to sit next to her, the dirt of the mound gritty between his fingers. Her uniform is charred. He realizes, with some discomfort, that she is literally still smoking. Feverish eyes. Skin raw in some places. 

“How are things out there?” she asks, voice gravelly from disuse. 

“Pretty bad,” he tells her. No point in mincing words, you know? They’re both. Dead right now. As far as he can tell. “Things just got worse after…” 

“Oh. So it wasn’t an isolated incident?” 

“No. We’ve, um. We’ve lost a lot of people. In increasingly creative ways.” 

She draws in a shaky breath. “God. I mean, I’d figured as much after the Book, that it wouldn’t stop with just me and just the fire, but—” 

“Yeah,” he says. 

“How long?”

Mike looks away. “Five years,” he tells the bleachers. “Season six just wrapped.” _No point in mincing words,_ he reminds himself. She’ll have to find out at some point.

Her breath leaves her in one rush. _“Fuck.”_

Everything smells like smoke. “Yeah,” he says again. 

“We ever get any better?” 

“Yeah, a little. We aren’t shit without our star pitcher, though.” 

She nods and tilts her head back to look at the hazy, starless sky. “You don’t look burned. What are you doing here, Mike?” 

“I don’t kn—” He stops himself. Of course he knows. “Making a trade.” 

Jaylen looks at him sharply. “Mike.” 

“It’s okay. We got the blessing. You’re going home, Jaylen.” 

Her face twists. “Mike—” 

“They love you over there, okay? What the hell are you doing still here? It wasn’t fair that you died, Jaylen, it just _wasn’t,_ and when we heard that we could get you _back—”_ He laughs, just a little hysterically. “They all told me I didn’t have to, but I knew. It was the best possible outcome.” 

“I can’t let you do this.” 

“You don’t have a choice, Jaylen,” Mike says quietly. He doesn’t either. He made his choice back at the gate. He made his choice when he got in his car. He made his choice when he woke up in the morning and his chest felt hollow and he stared out the window at Seattle and it was a rare sunny day and he thought, _Jaylen deserves to see this._ He made his choice before he even knew he had one. Made his choice when he saw Jaylen’s name at number fourteen on the idol board. There is no option here where he gets to go home. 

“Yes I do,” she says desperately. “You can’t—you can’t _take_ that from me.” 

He laughs again, ugly, his throat raw. “You really think I have any say in this? You think either of us do? We’re just playing roles. We’ve known from the start that it was a game.” He flings his arm out to gesture wildly at the stadium. “God, they don’t even let us _die!_ We stay on the field. We have to keep playing.” His arm drops back down to his side, limp. “We have to just keep playing. At least this way you and I both get to be the heroes.” No dragon to slay, though. Little more than a ruined castle to return home to. 

Jaylen is trembling against his side, and when he looks back over at her, her eyes are wet. “Mike, I—” 

“Don’t apologize,” he says. 

“Okay. I won’t.” 

“Thank you.” 

They watch the field for a while. There’s a game going on, he thinks. Afterimages of players moving in slow motion, paled blurs against the darkness. A shortstop throwing herself to the earth to tag out a baserunner. A hitter, their bat cracking silently against the shadow of a ball. He hopes they’re winning. All of them. 

“Here,” he says, after—he doesn’t know how long. It doesn’t matter for him anymore. Jaylen looks over at him questioningly, and he digs a baseball out of his pocket, the red stitching gone frayed at the ends. “It’s for you.” 

“You don’t have to—” 

“I want you to have it. I feel like I won’t be using it so much, y’know? Don’t, hah, don’t think they have much of a team in the shadows. I’m not staying on the field. I’m...” He inhales slowly. “I’m just here to… tag you back in, I guess.” 

He hands her the ball, and she clutches it hard with two shaking hands, staring down at where her fingers curl around the white cowhide. “What if they hate me?” 

“They won’t,” he says, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder, just for a moment. “They’ll be so happy to have you back, Jay. You’ll see.” 

“Okay,” she whispers. “Okay,” and he watches her gaze go steely and determined. “Okay.” 

“Give ‘em hell,” Mike grins. 

“I will,” she says, grinning back, and he gets up to go. He doesn’t know where. The shadows will probably find him eventually, though. He isn’t worried about that. 

The smile fades from Jaylen’s face. “Hey. Mike?” 

He stops a few steps away from the pitcher’s mound. “Yeah?” 

“You wanna just sit here for a few more minutes?” 

“Yeah,” he says, and he sits back down. “Yeah. Okay.” 

And together they watch the timeless game until the stadium lights flicker and die.   
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! i am NOT thinking about the fact that jaylen was hated as soon as she came back and also got switched off the garages and also mike came back and she was gone again and an incredibly traumatized shell of her former self. you can find me on tumblr @boneroutes, and i have a blaseball twitter @bloneroutes. comments & kudos make my day! :)


End file.
